The Paris Museum of Modern Art Theft
This story sounds like it’s something out of a comic book or like something I just made up but I promise I didn’t. It’s about the insane robbery of the Paris Museum of Modern Art in 2010 and it involves parkour, paint stripping acid, and five missing masterpieces. If that doesn't pique your interest idk what will.
I know I usually start by giving you some background on the painting/work of art or artist in question but this time I’m going to focus more on the story of the thief, the robbery, and the surrounding context. So, usually, I don’t really care about telling you the name of the criminal involved and telling you about them but in this case, it is so clear that this person is craving the attention and recognition and I really do not want to give it to him. So I have figured out a way to write about this case and not feel bad (or at least feel a little less bad), I will not be using the real names of any of the thieves involved, nor will I be including their photographs so the focus remains on the story.
Some Background on The Thief
Our villain here will be called The Thief because that’s what he is. He lived in Paris as a boy near the Père Lachaise cemetery where he would play. When normal playing got boring he and his friends would climb the tombstones and mausoleums and jump from structure to structure, honing their parkour skills.
At the age of ten he pulled off his very first heist, you can see he was already on a bad path, he broke into a library in Mostar by climbing through a window nearly TEN FEET above street level (please remember this is a 10-year-old kid) and stole two extremely old books. There was literally no reason for him to do this but he says that it was intuitive for him.
As he grew older he began to become obsessed with fine art. He loved Renoir and Monet and after a visit to the Musée de l’Orangerie, he told his mother that he wanted to become an artist. Honestly wish he had become an artist because then maybe the rest of the story wouldn’t have happened. Unfortunately, his father was not supportive of this, causing some friction at home and eventually, The Thief ran away to squat in an abandoned warehouse with some friends. He stopped going to school and the boys made money by selling stolen items. As time went on The Thief started to become more daring and started to rob fancy apartments in affluent neighbourhoods. He describes “his burglaries in oddly mystical terms, suggesting that his actions were compelled by invisible forces” (Halpern, 2019) and he talks about canvassing neighbourhoods before committing a crime because he wanted to have a positive, emotional connection to the place he chose.
Then one night he had a dream that he stole five paintings from a museum and, of course, he took that as a sign.
Around this time his reputation was growing around Paris, people thought of him as a ‘gentleman thief’ (what does that even mean), making him feel untouchable and indestructible while he leapt from rooftop to rooftop and scaled walls with his loot. For example, there was an instance where he used a crossbow, ropes, and carabiners to sneak into an apartment while the owners were sleeping inside and steal two Renoirs, a Derain, an Utrillo, a Braque, and various other works without getting caught, a haul worth more than a million euros. So in fairness, this would definitely go to anyone’s head.
Of course, this story was the exception, not the rule and obviously, The Thief tended to romanticize what was actually happening. In reality, he did get away with a lot but he also got caught a lot and had been convicted of at least a dozen crimes and had spent over a year in jail previously.
However, that obviously didn’t deter him and his over-inflated ego.
The Paris Museum of Modern Art Robbery
In May of 2010, The Thief was strolling through Paris when a beautiful building (and the paintings inside) caught his eye. Of course, it was Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (MAM). He noticed that one of the windows was blocked by a tower from the security cameras so he took a closer look. Ya know, always gotta be on the lookout for heist opps. The screws on the window were a kind that he recognized, a few years earlier he carried out a successful heist by taking a window apart that was just like this one and he became convinced that he could break into the museum and steal anything he wanted.
A few days later he went into the museum, legally, as a visitor and noticed that the motion detectors (which should have been switching from green to red when they detected movement) were stuck on green, therefore they weren’t working. Honestly, this story is 50% a savvy criminal and 50% luck.
The part that isn’t luck was the fact that he thought ahead. As I’ve mentioned in other articles, famous paintings are EXTREMELY hard to sell on the black market as they’re so recognizable and as a result usually they don’t sell for very much if at all. The Thief knew this and connected with a man I will call Disney Villian (apparently he looked like one at the trial (oops, spoiler alert)), they had an existing ‘business’ relationship. Disney Villian, in fact, actually asked The Thief to get him a specific painting from the MAM, Léger’s 1922 Still Life with Candlestick. For this painting, he offered The Thief $40k (the painting was really worth upwards of $4 million so you can see my point above).
So, The Thief had his shopping list and he had a way in. Ironically, he didn’t actually need his parkour skills, for which he was so famous, for this heist as the window was at street level, so it was actually pretty easy. On May 14, 2010, he returned to the MAM around 3:00 am. He brought a large piece of black cloth with him to hang over the window and cover him while he worked. It was a long and painstaking process to actually get the window open, it ended up taking him SIX NIGHTS. Sorry, but how did no one notice?? “First, he dabbed the window frame with paint-stripping acid, exposing the head of each screw. Then, after applying another solution, to eliminate rust, he removed the screws and filled the holes with brown modelling clay that matched the colour of the window frame” (Halpern, 2019).
On May 20 the process was complete and he arrived at the museum again around 3:00 am. He used suction cups to remove the window without breaking it (this is the part that sounds like it’s from a cheesy spy movie) and then cut the bars inside with a bolt cutter (not everything can be funny and cheesy). He went inside and then came back out and waited for 15 minutes to see if he had set off any silent alarms. When he was sure he hadn’t, he went back in and took Léger’s Still Life with Candlestick out of its frame as requested. But then he started looking around and stole four other paintings for no good reason other than the fact that he liked them.
Along with the Léger, he stole Georges Braque’s Olive Tree near l’Estaque (1906), Henri Matisse’s Pastoral (1906), Amedeo Modigliani’s Woman with Fan (1919), and Pablo Picasso’s Dove with Green Peas (1911). All masterpieces, and estimated by the City of Paris to be worth approximately €109 million.
The Aftermath
Once he had all of these paintings out of their frames it took him two trips to being the canvasses from the museum to his car which he had parked a few streets away. Then he drove them to Disney Villian to sell, however since they had only agreed on the price for the Léger the others were going to be sold on consignment or stored for The Thief’s personal use (apparently he had ‘fallen in love’ with some of them).
The next morning the story was all over the news, duh, it was the biggest heist since the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum theft. The mayor of Paris and the police force vowed that they would do everything in their power to find the paintings and catch the person(s) responsible. For a while, they had nothing to go on and people were nervous that the case was going to get cold without a resolution. Luckily, The Thief liked to brag a lot and he also didn’t like to change his MO (way of working).
In October 2010, the police received an anonymous tip about The Thief and they started to look into him, even tapping his phone where they heard him talking about the paintings and the robbery. This definitely interested them but it wasn’t enough for an arrest so they had to keep surveilling him. They followed him to the Centre Georges Pompidou (one of the biggest modern art museums in Europe) where he seemed a little too interested in the emergency exits. A day later they watched him buy two suction cups, glue, and construction gloves (eye roll).
The police then called his phone to speak with him but they got his voicemail which said (and I could not make this up if I tried) “If you want to buy paintings or works of art, or exceptional jewellery, do not hesitate to contact me. Among the many paintings, there are five that are extremely expensive” (Halpern, 2019). But even then they didn’t arrest him!! A popular theory as to why is that the police were afraid of coming down too hard on The Thief and causing the paintings to be moved or even destroyed before they could be recovered, and recovering them was their #1 priority.
So the world waited and while they did Disney Villian and The Thief found a buyer for Modigliani’s Woman with Fan, a watchmaker who will be called Weasel. In addition to buying the painting, Weasel agreed to store the four other paintings in his workshop which had a sophisticated alarm system. All this time the police STILL didn’t arrest The Thief but they watched him commit a bunch of other parkour break-ins before finally doing the damn thing and arresting him.
The After-Aftermath
The Thief was not a good liar so almost immediately he confessed to the police when questioned and he quickly rolled on his accomplices so Disney Villian’s studio and Weasel’s workshop were both raided but there was no sign of the paintings. Weasel claims that the paintings were in his workshop the whole time and the police just missed them but that is highly doubtful IMHO.
The three were tried together in 2017 and there The Thief stopped acting as though he had a shred of remorse. He openly bragged about his ‘masterpiece’ of a theft, continued to say that the paintings were now his personal property, and seemed very happy that he was able to publicly put his name to the crime (which is why we’re not doing that here). Weasel said that he panicked when he suspected the police were onto them and had ripped up the canvasses and threw them in the garbage. But, most people, including his own wife don’t believe that this is the real story but unfortunately, no one knows where these paintings are. They haven’t been seen since they were stolen from the MAM.
At the end of the day all three men were found guilty. Disney Villian was sentenced to seven years, Weasel was given six, and The Thief got eight along with fines for all three men totalling $110 million (though they will never be able to pay). When The Thief left the courtroom he seemed very composed and almost smug. Many onlookers believe that he knows exactly where the paintings are.
And that is, kind of, it. Sadly, these paintings are still missing and no one is sure what the real story is regarding their whereabouts. Did they get destroyed? Are they still hidden somewhere? Have they been shipped overseas to a buyer? I hope that they will one day be found and restored to their home at the MAM for everyone to enjoy. For now, you can be sure that the MAM has raised their level of security and my fingers are crossed that they don’t make it as easy as this for any other would-be thieves.
Works Cited
Halpern, Jake. “The French Burglar Who Pulled Off His Generations’ Biggest Art Heist”. The New Yorker. 2019. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/14/the-french-burglar-who-pulled-off-his-generations-biggest-art-heist
McNearney, Allison. “The ‘Spiderman’ Art Heist and the Five Missing Masterpieces”. Daily Beast. 2018. https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-spiderman-art-heist-and-the-five-missing-masterpieces